


I, Too

by iwillnotbecaged



Category: American Writer RPF, Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Flirting, M/M, long conversations, serious discussions of racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 03:40:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5952355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwillnotbecaged/pseuds/iwillnotbecaged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1949, Langston Hughes spent 3 months as a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. While there, he ran into Gabe Jones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I, Too

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [pringlesaremydivision](http://archiveofourown.org/users/pringlesaremydivision/pseuds/pringlesaremydivision) for the read through and to [Brenda](http://archiveofourown.org/users/brenda) and [hansbekhart](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hansbekhart) for giving me the courage to even attempt this in the first place.
> 
> Title from the Langston Hughes poem that appears at the beginning of the fic.

_I, too, sing America._

_I am the darker brother._  
_They send me to eat in the kitchen_  
_When company comes,_  
_But I laugh,_  
_And eat well,_  
_And grow strong._

_Tomorrow,_  
_I’ll be at the table_  
_When company comes._  
_Nobody’ll dare_  
_Say to me,_  
_“Eat in the kitchen,”_  
_Then._

_Besides,_  
_They’ll see how beautiful I am_  
_And be ashamed—_

_I, too, am America._

 

“Mr. Hughes?”

Langston was packing up his materials after the last class of the day. He was looking forward to spending the evening in his hotel, resting from the week of teaching and answering some of his correspondence. He had set aside this time in his mind to respond to a particular young writer who had sent him a very promising piece. Carl had been invaluable to him when he was starting out and he liked passing some of that help along to the next generation.

He answered without looking up from his papers. “I’m sorry - I don’t hold office hours on Fridays. Will it keep until Monday?”

The man responded with a laugh. “Oh, I’m not a student.” Langston looked up to find none other than Gabe Jones, Howling Commando, leaning in his classroom doorway. Definitely not a student.

Gabe straightened up and entered the room. “Gabe Jones. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hughes.”

“Please, call me Langston,” he said, shaking the proffered hand. “What brings you out to Chicago?”

“The Lab School asked me to come give a few lectures about the war. I guess they figure that since I was there, I can provide some sort of insight.” Gabe rubbed the back of his neck. “I feel a lot more comfortable when I slip into one of the language classrooms, though.”

“I’m sure the students enjoy hearing from you. From what I hear, you’re quite the hero to a lot of them.”

“Yeah...it’s a bit strange. Lots of guys did just as much or more than me over there. But I got the press, so I’m the hero.” Gabe rubbed the back of his neck again. He seemed nervous, shy. Langston found himself considering how to put him at ease. “But I guess you probably know all about that, what with all those writers who look up to you.”

Langston huffed a laugh. “Well, I don’t know whether they see me as a hero. Seems to me that more of them want to disagree with me than ask for advice these days.”

“Their loss, then.” Gabe’s smile was filled with warmth. Langston wanted to see more of it. “I actually came by to see if you’d like to grab a drink this evening. I have to head back to Washington tomorrow, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to meet you. If you have the time, of course.”

“That sounds lovely. I know just the place.”

 

The Blue Note was full of smoky air and smoky jazz. Duke Ellington had played there for a couple of weeks the month before, but Langston and Gabe didn’t feel like they were missing anything. The house musicians were doing a fine job and the drinks were good. They didn’t say much during their first round, just watched the dancers and enjoyed the music.

“I come here because it reminds me of a club I visited when I lived in Paris. Wonderful city. Full of beauty and light.” Langston gazed at a sight in his memory, a small smile on his face.

“I envy you the memory. The Paris I saw was anything but.” Gabe took another drink.

“One of the great tragedies of the war. They’ll rebuild, though. In my experience, the French never stand for anything less than excellence.”

“There must have been plenty of them who liked you, then.” That was bolder than he expected from a man like Gabe. Maybe it was just the whiskey.

Langston gave a sly smile. “I don’t mean to boast, but I didn’t exactly lack for company.” Gabe laughed at that. It was a good laugh, loud and full, like when a church organ is played by someone who knows what they’re doing.

The conversation meandered. Gabe told stories from growing up in Macon and his time at Howard, and Langston described life among the artists and writers of Harlem before the depression. His retelling of Zora Neale Hurston’s dressing-down of Countee Cullen when he tried to scold her for using the term “niggerati” nearly had Gabe falling out of his seat laughing.

They discussed art, movies, and, of course, music. They both loved jazz, but Langston liked Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonius Monk while Gabe preferred the new stuff Miles Davis was coming out with. They argued about whether or not black writers needed to worry about how they portrayed themselves in literature - should they be putting their best foot forward, or telling it the way they saw it? Neither of them could come up with a satisfactory answer to that question.

Gabe’s body loosened as the night went on. He was slouched in his chair and appeared relaxed, although his hands never quite stopped fidgeting with the things on the table. He told Langston about particular poems of his that he had enjoyed, which brought them around to the topic they had avoided so far: the war.

“I liked that poem of yours - ‘Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?’ That was a nice piece of writing.” Gabe tipped his drink towards Langston in a kind of salute.

“Thank you very much. It was a question a lot of people back here were asking as we seemed to get closer to the end of things.”

“It was a question a lot of us were asking over there. I heard lots of talk from men and women wondering what the end of the war would mean for them back home.” Gabe shook his head. “Looks like they were right to wonder - that G.I. Bill ain’t exactly all it promised to be.”

Langston sipped his drink. “You know, I didn’t think we should even try to serve in the war at first. Why fight for Jim Crow? They talked about the Germans being victims of a mass psychosis, but they might as well have been speaking about white Southerners in Dixie.”

Gabe nodded. “True. But the men I served with weren’t really fighting for a nation.”

Langston raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not talking about Rogers and Dernier and the other Commandos - they were fighting for nations. But the Negro units? Most of them were fighting for an idea, for hope. For a different future.”

“That’s about how I came to see it, too. If serving would make things easier for the black man when he came home, then maybe it was worth it.”

“And now here we all are, on the other side of things.”

“Was it? Worth it, I mean.”

Gabe twisted his glass in the condensation that had gathered on the table. “I don’t really know yet. Maybe. It might not make my life all that better, but after the things I saw over there...we were there when they liberated Dachau, you know. After that, I’m not sure I’m comfortable worrying about whether or not fighting was better for me than staying home.”

There were ghosts behind Gabe’s eyes. The noise of the club washed over them, but Gabe wasn’t at the table with him anymore. Langston waited for him to come back before he continued.

“It _is_ our nation though. We’re not just Negroes - we’re Negro Americans. America is just as much ours as it is theirs.”

“America.” Gabe paused, toying with the ashtray on the table. “That one word seems to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Guess that’s part of why I hear so many different opinions about Rogers these days.”

“What was he like, the great Captain America?” Langston didn’t attempt to veil the disdain in his voice. Thankfully, Gabe just responded with a wry laugh.

“Different than you would imagine. More than he seemed in the movies or comics.”

“Oh really?”

“He was a poor Irish kid from Brooklyn with a list of medical problems as long as your arm. According to Barnes, he’d been a socialist back before the war and spent most of his time getting himself beat up for spouting off about one thing or another. He had at least some understanding of what it can be like.”

Langston scoffed. “The depression brought everyone down a peg or two. We had but few pegs to fall. It’s not the same thing.” 

“No, not the same. I just mean that he hadn’t had it easy. He knew what it was like to always be proving yourself. Don’t get me wrong - he was a stupid, stubborn son of a bitch a lot of the time. But it was the stubbornness that made me and Morita a part of the Howling Commandos in the first place. The brass didn’t want us there, especially not when there were cameras rolling. Rogers wouldn’t stand for it; said we had just as much a right to be there as anyone else.”

Gabe sat up a bit straighter in his chair.

“I think it was more than just being poor and sickly that made him that way. He and Barnes...I don’t know. We were busy fighting a war, but I sometimes got the feeling that Rogers knew exactly what is was like to be different in a way that people might kill you for. He just carried that difference inside of him instead of in his skin.”

“You telling me that Captain America was a fairy?”

“I couldn’t say for sure. I never asked; it wasn’t my business. But I’d catch him looking at Barnes sometimes and it seemed like there was something more than friendship there.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. Bet that would mess some folks up if it got out.” Langston laughed and took another sip of his drink. “What about Barnes?” 

“I couldn’t say one way or the other. Like I said, it wasn’t my business. We had plenty of other things to occupy our attention.”

“True, true.” Langston signalled the waiter for another round. “I wonder if those two ever made it up to Harlem before the war. My friends and I could have shown them a good time.” The words were casual, but there was a weight behind them. A hint at one way the night could go, if Gabe wanted it. Langston dangled it out there, waited to see if he would bite. Gabe held Langston’s gaze and smiled.

“I bet you could have. I thought about heading that direction after I got home, but I ended up staying in Washington. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get there at some point.” The waiter arrived with the new drinks and Langston looked at him over the edge of the glass.

“Look me up if you do find yourself there. I’ll show you around all the best places.”

“I will definitely do that.” 

Gabe fiddled with his drink. “This should probably be my last one. It’s getting to be late and I’ve got a train to catch tomorrow. But if you wanted…” He trailed off. Took a deep breath. “They put me up in a real nice hotel while I was here. I’d love to keep talking to you. If you wanted.”

Langston smiled broadly, but Gabe was too busy studying the woodgrain in the table to notice it. “I would very much like the opportunity to...continue our conversation, Gabe.”

Gabe looked up, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Yeah?”

“Absolutely. We should settle the bill and finish these drinks while you tell me something ridiculous the Commandos did during the war, and then I’ll accompany you back to the hotel.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Gabe’s grin lit the room. “And I can definitely tell you something ridiculous. So we were in Austria, and Dum-Dum found this cow in a field…”

 

Langston flipped through the mail that he had allowed to pile up on his desk. The months teaching in Chicago had been long and draining, and while he was glad to be back in New York, the day-to-day routine and gray weather was wearing on him. He was less than enthusiastic about dealing with the types of inquiries and requests his mail usually held.

There was one envelope that didn’t appear to be business related, though, and he opened it first, hoping for a bit of good news.

_Langston —_

_You told me once that I should let you know if I was ever in your area. As luck would have it, I am planning a trip to New York in December and would love to take you up on your offer of hospitality._

_Our conversation in Chicago was one of the most enlightening and invigorating experiences I have had in recent years, as short as it may have been, and I am eager to continue where we left off._

_Your friend,_

_Gabe Jones_

Well, thought Langston. That was good news indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Some of Langston Hughes's lines come directly from things he actually said or wrote. I attempted to weave them in with as little awkwardness as possible.
> 
> The inspiration for this fic came from "I, Too" and also ["Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?"](http://genius.com/Langston-hughes-will-v-day-be-me-day-too-lyrics). If you've never read any of Hughes's poetry, you're missing out and you should go fix that right now :)
> 
> Come say hi [on Tumblr](http://i-will-not-be-caged.tumblr.com)!


End file.
